U.S. Bird Flu Scenario Eyed

Expert Warns It's Not 'If,' But 'When' And U.S. Is Not Prepared

(CBS/AP)  Omi also echoed the organization's repeated calls for wealthy nations to make some of their stockpiles of Tamiflu available to poorer nations.

Last month, Swiss-based Roche Holding AG announced it would donate 3 million treatment courses of Tamiflu to a WHO-managed stockpile, but the first million courses will not be ready until early next year and the remaining 2 million will not be ready until mid-2006.

Branswell said several key lessons should have been learned following Canada's recent experience with the deadly SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).

"In the modern world, infectious diseases travel at jet speed," she said. "Pandemic planners tell us we may have up to three months before a pandemic virus hits North America. I have no idea why they are so optimistic. SARS was raging in Toronto hospitals before it even had a name, before the WHO warned anybody to be on the lookout for the disease."

"In general terms, we are not much better able to handle acute respiratory distress syndrome, in any number of cases today, than we were in 1918," when as many as 100 million people died worldwide, Osterholm said.

But he takes heart that President Bush mentioned bird flu last week at the United Nations, and then again this week, saying the nation "needs to be mindful of this potentially devastating disease."

Last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said on CBS News' The Early Show bird flu is "the pandemic we're worried about currently."

"We're doing things that I believe are common sense," he told co-anchor Harry Smith. "We're increasing the amount of surveillance or early warning that we have in other countries."

Wednesday, health ministers and policy makers from more than 30 countries meeting in Noumea, New Caledonia, endorsed an Asia-Pacific strategy to contain emerging diseases, including H5N1.

Addressing the assembly, Omi said Asian countries must change the way they raise animals if future pandemics are to be averted.

"Every year we have (had) new emerging diseases for the last 20 years. Some are from Africa, some from Asia, (but) every one are zoonoses, animal diseases," Omi told the assembly.

Zoonoses are animal diseases that can cross species.

Omi said preliminary research into the spread of avian influenza in birds and humans had shown the disease had a greater prevalence in regions with higher population densities and larger numbers of domestic birds.

Outbreaks of bird flu in areas of Europe had been successfully contained in part because of more stringent controls on farming practices, he said.

"Unless we address these factors we have to expect more emerging diseases, especially zoonoses," Omi said. "If we are lucky to avoid this pandemic (bird flu), the next will come certainly."

The Asia-Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases calls on governments to enact local action plans or pass legislation to reduce the prevalence of animal-borne illnesses.

In particular, Omi said Asian governments must educate farmers about the risks of keeping ducks — which can carry H5N1 without showing any symptoms — and chickens in close proximity.